My first introduction to Winnipeg’s CKJS 810 came in high school when one of my classmates, either knowing it would appeal to my fondness for the absurd or in a failed bid to save my soul, handed me a leaflet promoting The Bob Larson Show. As I recall it, Larson performed on-air exorcisms and chattered away about Satan during a controversial, quasi-religious syndicated show that aired on CKJS starting at 11 p.m.

So, for a while, I would listen to 15 minutes or maybe a half-hour of Larson doing his weird late-night show until I lost interest after a while. Given that I remain about as religious as your average coffee pot, it hardly sold me on Larson’s quirky brand of Christianity, but it was mildly amusing all the same.

While analyzed on its own, CKJS has been operating at a low PBIT margin, its role within the Winnipeg Cluster cannot be overstated. Dufferin is very concerned about it’s declining revenues year over year. The scenarios with and without approval, filed confidentially, clearly show the outcome stemming from this decision. Denial will keep CKJS on the downward trend, likely to become more aggravated when combined with rising operating costs and inflation. Approval on the other hand will ensure its incumbent status, reverse the trend and keep it modestly profitable as a key and integral part of the Winnipeg cluster.

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At present, Dufferin leases several acres of land in order to operate the antenna array required to deliver the signal of CKJS. In contrast, single tower rents for FM services in the market are not nearly as expensive. Allowing Dufferin to operate CKJS on the FM frequency would result in an immediate decrease in costs, as well as ongoing savings into the future. These profits would then be used to ensure all three members of the Winnipeg Cluster can deliver high quality programming to the demographics they are intended to serve.

If the CKJS application is approved, the new 92.7 FM signal would originate from a Rogers Broadcasting-owned tower on St. Mary’s Road at a maximum power of 35,000 watts. The current 10,000-watt AM signal originates from a series of towers just off Waverley St. south of the Perimeter Highway.

Yet CKJS 92.7 might struggle with its own reception issues. If you tune your radio to 92.7 right now — especially in the south end of the city, close to where most of the high-powered 100,000-watt FM transmitters are located — you might not necessarily hear the calming hiss of dead air, but a cacophony of signal spillovers from other stations.

Some of this might come from 92.1 CITI FM, whose powerful signal throws off radio debris up to several FM frequencies away in both directions. The lower end of 92.7’s bandwidth is also nearly 10.6 MHz below the powerful Virgin Radio 103.1 signal, which could cause some radios to pick up both signals due to design issues.

The state of the lower FM dial, April 2017. Note the splatter thrown off by the high-powered station, and the background interference on 92.7 (upper right).

The 92.7 frequency is also one of a shrinking number of plausibly useable FM frequencies in Winnipeg. Stations with the kind of strength needed to push an easily audible FM signal deep into office buildings generally need to be kept at least 0.6 MHz apart just to prevent mutual interference.

Depending on signal strength, new FM signals may need to be up to 290 kilometres (180 miles) apart from existing FM stations on the same frequency, and up to 240 kilometres (149 miles) apart from neighbouring-frequency stations. The latter radius alone includes Kenora, Grand Forks, Brandon and other communities.

Add to that the aforementioned splatter from other high-powered stations which has left very few “quiet” zones between stations on the local FM band.

Normally, the regulators at the CRTC frown on a single station owner holding more than two FM licences in a single metropolitan area, a limitation that CKJS’s owners have asked to be exempted from on public service grounds. Granting the exemption, however, raises the question of why a low-listenership station should be given priority over Winnipeg’s two remaining commercial AM stations, CJOB 680 and TSN 1290.

Even if they would prefer to abandon the AM dial, it would be very difficult to shoe—horn either CJOB or TSN 1290 into a crowded and interference-plagued FM band. There has been talk about extending the FM band down to 76 MHz now that TV channels 5 and 6 have been nearly abandoned due to their poor suitability for digital TV broadcasting, but any action is still years away. So too is a migration to all-digital radio, which would allow two or more stations to share the same frequency, just as digital TV stations are able to do today.

* – Some fellow radio geeks might wonder how I was able to generate the image above. This was thanks to a handy device called the SDRPlay Wideband USB Radio Receiver, which allows the user — after downloading a free program called Cubic SDR — to receive radio signals almost up to the microwave range on a laptop or desktop computer. I’ve used its visualizations with a bit of success to improve my digital TV reception, by finding the “good” spots where my antenna receives the most signal and the least noise on the troublesome VHF band. One of my discoveries: both channels 7 and 13 are vulnerable to FM harmonics. That is, the same FM stations that litter the rest of the FM dial with signal splatter are throwing their radio debris up into the 176 to 216 MHz range, i.e., 88 to 108 MHz times two.

Tomorrow, Scottish voters will go to the polls to answer a simple and direct question: “Should Scotland be an independent country?”

When the campaign began last November, it was widely believed that the result might be similar to the outcome of the 1980 sovereignty referendum in Quebec, in which 60 percent voted against cutting the province’s ties with the rest of Canada.

But a vigorous “Yes” campaign led by Scottish first minister Alex Salmond, and a lacklustre “No” campaign led by Alistair Darling, Britain’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer, has dramatically closed the gap. As of this evening, a comparison to the too-close-to-call 1995 Quebec referendum might be in order, as the final polls suggest a slight “No” lead.

Despite our own experiences with Quebec nationalism, many Canadians still wonder why about one-half of Scots would want to separate from a relatively large and successful country of 64 million people to become a small country of just over five million people.

Isn’t bigger supposed to be better? Indeed, why don’t countries that share the same language merge to get rid of this wasteful duplication of governments and to increase their power on the world stage: Austria with Germany, New Zealand with Australia, Uruguay with Argentina, Ireland back into the United Kingdom . . . and Canada with the United States?

Alas, global might seldom translates into domestic bliss. Last January, this blog noted that when citizens of OECD countries were asked to rate their overall life satisfaction on a zero-to-10 scale, the countries at the top of the list read like a who’s who of small countries with little global influence: Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Denmark.

Further analysis suggested that satisfaction with life was closely tied to having a job and a steady income, feeling healthy, living in decent housing, and having a good personal social support network.

Credit Suisse, a Zurich-based bank and financial services company, also noticed that small countries tended to do better than their larger neighbours in securing a good life for their citizens, and conducted their own study, called “The Success of Small Countries”, to understand why.

Not only did Credit Suisse find a negative relationship between a country’s size and its per capita GDP, but they also found that smaller countries tended to do better in education, health, equality and other aspects of human development — even noting that Scotland has a higher level of human development than the U.K. as a whole, while Catalonia does better than Spain, the country many Catalans hope to separate from in the years ahead.

Smallness might also lead to pragmatism. The Credit Suisse report noted that smaller countries have opened themselves more to international trade than their larger neighbours, and have been more enthusiastic about globalization and technology. Their governments also tend to be less wasteful, in part because they don’t have to please as many parochial constituencies, as the report notes:

The larger the country, the more the need for local and regional governments to manage some of the key social services like education or police services.

Decentralization also gives rise to transfers from the central government to the poorer regions or states to allow for a more balanced growth and relative wealth across the country. Transfers — a political tool to keep a country together — add complexity and may lead to distortions and inefficiencies if not allocated properly . . .

The USA and the European Union provide a valuable illustration of this dynamic. In the USA, Federalism has added costs as each state has its own government infrastructure and ability to issue legislation. The result of this ‘government’ structure is often overspending and higher deficits at the regional or local level.

The same could be said about the European Union and the component states: 40% of the legislative acts of the EU concern agricultural policies, while agriculture represents less than 5% of European GDP.

A final factor that smaller countries seem to have on their side: higher levels of urbanization. The report notes that “cities are the most efficient form of human settlement” and are a “massive driver of growth and of wealth”. Urban societies are said to be “more practical and less ideological”, are better at producing higher-income jobs, and have citizens who are more comfortable dealing with cultural differences.

Thus, the Credit Suisse report might hold some of the clues to the appeal of Scottish nationalism. An independent Scotland would be under less pressure than the British government in London has long been to please far-flung constituencies, could focus its energies on building a healthier and better-educated population — which it needs in troubled areas such as Glasgow — and would have little choice but to be open to globalization. It would also be a highly urbanized country, with about 70 percent of its population living in the regions surrounding Edinburgh and Glasgow, and about 80 percent officially living in urban areas.

Yet this should not be taken as an endorsement of the “Yes” camp in tomorrow’s referendum. The Economist, always a source of sensible advice, points out in its call for Scots to vote “No” tomorrow that the nationalists’ optimism about oil revenues and the possibility of keeping the British pound as the Scottish currency are contestable. They also point out that, horrified by the close call with national breakup, the British government is likely to give the existing Scottish legislature so many additional powers within the U.K. that independence would be hardly worth seeking.

The end of one year and the beginning of another is always a good time to think about how to make the next year better than the last.

In that spirit, here are a few favourite bits of good advice I still like to look over from time to time to put things into perspective. By posting them here, maybe they will help others in 2012:

“Keep Calm and Carry On” – Government advice to British citizens during World War II

“Whatever line of work you get into… make sure it’s something you love, something you enjoy doing. If you can accomplish this, you are bound to be successful.” – George Burns

“One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!” – Former British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill

“Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well find some way that is going to be interesting.” – Actress Katharine Hepburn

“One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore faith in yourself.” – Actress Lucille Ball

“The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy. I mean that if you are happy you will be good.” – Philosopher Bertrand Russell

“Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it.” – Bertrand Russell

“Don’t get kicked out the back door. If you’re going to get kicked out, go out the front, with your dignity.” – Former Continental Airlines chief executive Gordon Bethune

“Don’t worry about things that you have no control over, because you have no control over them. Don’t worry about things that you have control over, because you have control over them.” – Mickey Rivers, former baseball player.

A happy New Year to all!

The View from Seven 2011 stats and factoids

Total visits to Dec. 30: 39,239 (mostly from within Manitoba, though there are “regulars” from around Canada and the U.S.)

Busiest Day: 409 visits on Sept. 1 (Canada’s analog-to-digital TV transition day, when a flood of visitors arrived wondering why they had suddenly lost their TV signals, using search terms like “No more TV in Manitoba what to do”)

Best reader anecdote: “I enjoyed reading about Transair. Back in the 1960′s I was involved in rocket flights out of Churchill had have fond memories of flying their DC-4, CF-TAW, that was only 4-years younger than I. There were stories of passenger participation in the operation. I myself asking the stewardess about 10 minutes out of Winnipeg whether the flaps should still be half extended. She said she would go up front to check. Within 30-seconds the flaps were fully retracted.” (By David Evans, June 11, 2011)

Most memorable search terms used to find this blog:Centreventure is evil, Will Princess Charles inherit the throne and Where to fuck in Belgium

The news broke late on a Sunday afternoon, normally a quiet news day. Fighter jets had been dispatched to follow Frontier Airlines Flight 623, en route from Denver to Detroit, following reports that a couple of passengers were acting suspiciously aboard the Airbus A318 jetliner.

After landing safely in Detroit, a SWAT team boarded the aircraft and ordered passengers to put their hands on the seat in front. Passengers then watched as three people were handcuffed and hauled off for questioning.

Then came reports that the “suspicious activity” on Flight 623 wasn’t terrorism at all, but rather a couple “making out” in the lavatory.

On the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the whole matter had been blown ridiculously out of proportion.

But even if this had been a case of a couple making love on board a commercial jetliner, it wouldn’t have been the first time.

“Prior to arrival Captain Thompson radioed operations advising that he wanted a British Airways senior official to meet his aircraft on arrival at Honolulu. He stated he had two passengers on board the aircraft who were creating problems,” read an undated telex sent back to British Airways headquarters in London sometime during the ’70s.

“We were advised that a man in seat 25A and a married woman seated 19A got together during flight and were using profane language and molesting one another,” the telex continued.

“Per Captain Thompson and the chief steward both passengers had sexual intercourse right in the plain sight of all other passengers. Captain Thompson stated once this was completed they both settled down and went to sleep and were of no bother from that point on. As a result Captain Thompson did not feel they should be offloaded.”*

While this couple faced no serious consequences from the airline for their conduct, others didn’t find airline employees to be as forgiving as Captain Thompson.

The trouble started when a woman traveling with her 13-year-old daughter complained to the flight attendant about the behaviour of the California-bound married couple across the aisle.

“It came to the attention of a mother who determined that kind of recreational pursuit was not the kind she wanted her daughter to see,” American spokesman Ed Martelle said in an interview.

Two other male passengers, however, had no objections to this unexpected form of in-flight entertainment. In fact, when a flight attendant tried to intervene, the two male passengers — described later by police as voyeurs — “began pelting her with food and drink.”

The couple were arrested for public indecency and possession of a controlled substance, while the two onlookers were arrested for disorderly conduct.

The unnamed flight attendant lost her job after she had sex with a passenger in a lavatory, sat on a sleeping First Class passenger’s face, kneed the chief purser in the groin and tried to grab his private parts, and finally tried to take off her clothing.

She later said that she could not recall any of those events.

The passengers, however, likely found their flight to Honolulu to be very memorable indeed.

I have something that I call the “Library Rule of Life” that strikes a bit of awe in me anytime I walk through Winnipeg’s Millennium Library. It’s the realization that even though I might not have enough of a personal interest to take home a copy of The Last Cowboys at the End of the World: The story of the gauchos of Patagonia by Nick Reding, Biography of a Germ by Arno Karlen or Modern Soldering & Brazing Techniques by Eli Lieberman, every book represents a subject that so fascinates an author that he or she took the trouble to write that book.

In short: Everyone gets their kicks in their own unique way.

Sometimes there are some things, though, that don’t command as much public interest today as they did in years past.

With no further ado, here’s a rundown of some once-popular hobbies that are now starting to fade into the past as the number of people with a passion for them declines.

Model railroad

Model Railroading: Fans of the long-running comic strip For Better or For Worse might recall that one of Dr. John Patterson’s favourite hobbies was model railroading. Lots of good that did this hobby, which is in trouble according to this online discussion among model railroaders. Perhaps it’s too peaceful a hobby for a generation used to Grand Theft Auto — a leftover from the days when most Canadians and Americans lived in small towns where trains were a vital lifeline to the outside world.

Amateur radio equipment

Shortwave and Amateur Radio: Once upon a time, the world felt like a much bigger place. For young Manitobans with an innate curiosity about the world, London, Paris and Sydney were distant, exotic places that most people could never afford to visit. Some people satisfied their curiosity by becoming amateur radio operators, which allowed them to use the shortwave bands to chat with Heikki in Helsinki, Nigel in Nottingham and Ted in Tulsa. Others, particularly expatriates, used shortwave radio to hear the news from the BBC World Service or Radio Portugal. Lower international Economy Class airfares (which used to cost the equivalent of a professional’s monthly gross income), e-mail, Facebook, online news sites and streaming audio have made it exponentially easier to get out and explore the world and for expatriates to keep in touch with what’s happening at home — and taken some of the mystique out of foreign lands.

Life in the '70s: CB Radio as "The In Thing!"

A similar hobby that has declined in popularity in recent years: Citizens’ Bank (or “CB”) Radio. CB Radio was, in some respects, a lower-budget alternative to amateur radio popularized in the ’70s by movies like Smokey and the Bandit and Citizens’ Band and by the hit TV shows B. J. and the Bear and The Dukes of Hazzard. The hobby lingered into the ’80s as a sort of pre-Internet radio chat room, but had faded into obscurity by the time the Internet hit the big time in 1993-94.

Brazil celebrates the legendary Pele's 1,000th goal, 1969.

Stamp Collecting: This is another one of those hobbies that dates back to the days when foreign lands were much more mysterious and difficult to access than they are today. Stamps were at one time important marketing tools for a country, both domestically and abroad. They helped raise historical awareness, celebrate national milestones, and promote tourism and a positive image of the issuing country. The invention of postage meters and the decline of mail traffic with the rise of the Internet reduced the role of the postage stamp in the ordinary citizen’s life, leading to the increasing obscurity of the stamp collecting hobby.

1990 Chicago White Sox rookie stars Robin Ventura and Sammy Sosa

Baseball Card Collecting: If you’re old enough to remember the ’80s, you’ll remember some of the card promotions companies used to run to get people to buy their products, such as commercials on U.S. television offering free baseball cards with every meal purchase at Long John Silver’s. Whether it be because of the exorbitant prices demanded for the best cards, or the fact that the business has shifted to Ebay, or just the arrival of other ways for people to pass their time, baseball card collecting is no longer what it once was.

Christmas is almost here again. Now is as good a time as any to take a break from the usual and to wish all readers a Merry Christmas and Season’s Greetings… and to share some favourite outtakes from television news and commercials to put a smile on your face.

It’s the August long weekend, which is pretty much the trough of the current affairs low season. It’s a good time, therefore, to put in a plug for some online movies worth checking out and for a couple of new entrants in the Winnipeg blogosphere.

Audrey Hepburn in "Wait Until Dark" (1967) (Click on image to watch)

If you’re interested in a good old-fashioned horror movie, be sure to check out the 1967 classic Wait Until Dark. A blind woman unwittingly finds herself in possession of a children’s doll stuffed with drugs, and has to outwit the three thugs trying to get it back. Audrey Hepburn was subsequently nominated for Best Actress for her role as Suzy Hendrix.

"The War Game" (1965) (Click image to watch)

Another rather chilling movie from about the same era is The War Game. Produced in 1965 as a BBC docudrama about the calamity that would result from a nuclear war — based on research on what happened in Japan following the 1945 attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in European cities engulfed in firestorms caused by WWII carpet-bombing campaigns — The War Game was deemed “too horrifying” to be aired until the mid-’80s. Though now tame by modern TV standards, it’s still a riveting drama.

Peter Finch in "Network" (1976) (Click image to watch)

In 1976, director Sidney Lumet’s new motion picture, Network, seemed like a far-fetched fantasy. After all, what network would be desperate enough to turn its evening newscast over to a ranting, delusional man in need of psychiatric care and give political extremists their own weekly prime-time network show? All these years later, Lumet and writer Paddy Chayefsky’s absurd movie about a TV network’s ruthless pursuit of ratings doesn’t seem so far-fetched after all. It won four Oscars, including Best Actor and Best Actress in a Leading Role.

"Le Dîner de cons" (1999) (Click on image to watch)

Before (or after) seeing Dinner for Schmucks, currently one of the most heavily promoted summer comedies, be sure to check out the French movie on which it was based — Le Dîner de cons (English title: The Dinner Game). A Chinese web site has thoughtfully posted the entire movie with English subtitles. As is usually the case, the Hollywood remake (given a 51% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) is considered inferior to the French original (with a 73% rating).

William Holden and Larry Hagman in "S.O.B." (1981) (Click on image to watch)

Finally, if you have a soft spot for black comedy, check out 1981’s S.O.B., Blake Edwards’ satire of the motion picture industry. Though it falls a bit flat in parts, other parts are laugh-out-loud funny — which is more than can be said for many Hollywood comedies.

Now, on to a couple of recent entrants to the blogosphere worth checking out. The first is from CBC reporter James Turner, who writes about local crime and justice issues in The Crime Scene. And if you’re interested in local history, check out Robert Galston’s The Common, which focuses on the people and streets of Point Douglas that played a major role in Winnipeg’s rise from a mere village to Canada’s eighth-largest metropolitan area.